News

The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) is preparing for the return of its Web Archiving Special Interest Group (WA-SIG), with the next meeting scheduled for Tuesday 7 July 2026 at 14:00 UTC.

In one form or another, WA-SIG has been part of the DPC programme for many years, offering DPC members a dedicated space to explore the practical, technical, and organisational challenges of web archiving as a core area of digital preservation practice.

As planning begins for this next phase of WA-SIG activity, the DPC is consulting with its members to help shape the group’s future direction, format, and priorities.

A renewed space for community learning

Web archiving remains one of the more complex and fast-moving areas of digital preservation, requiring practitioners to navigate changing technologies, evolving capture methods, legal considerations, and questions of scale and sustainability. It is also an area in which community discussion and shared experience can be especially valuable.

WA-SIG is intended to provide a welcoming, inclusive, and transparent space in which Members can exchange ideas, surface challenges, and learn from one another’s approaches.

Current planning principles include:

• recognizing web archiving as a core component of digital preservation activity;

• building a supportive forum for practical community exchange;

• rotating meeting times across global time zones to reflect DPC’s international Membership;

• delivering meetings virtually in the first instance, with in-person opportunities explored where appropriate;

• and establishing the group initially as a DPC Member space.

Member consultation now underway

To help ensure that the renewed WA-SIG reflects Member interests and priorities, the DPC has launched a short Member consultation today to gather feedback on expectations, preferred areas of discussion, and practical considerations ahead of the July relaunch.

This early input will help inform how the group gets underway, with further opportunities for Members to guide and contribute to future WA-SIG activity once regular meetings resume.

Further details about the July session, including joining instructions, will be shared in due course.

The iPRES 2026 Programme Committee has announced the return of the Digital Preservation Bake Off, taking place as part of this year’s International Conference on Digital Preservation in Copenhagen from 21–25 September 2026. The Call for Contributions is now open.

While no actual baking is involved, the Bake Off has become a much-loved part of the iPRES programme, combining a playful format with serious digital preservation challenges, live demonstrations, and practical problem-solving.

The Digital Repository of Ireland is hosting two upcoming online events in May. Together, the webinars explore both creative approaches to digital preservation training and emerging practical work around cultural heritage datasets.

The Call for Submissions is now open for the 21st edition of the International Digital Curation Conference, which will take place in Lisbon, Portugal, from 9 to 12 February 2027. 

The National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) has published its 2025 Fixity Survey Report, continuing the longitudinal study into fixity practices across the digital preservation community.

The UCL Department of Information Studies has announced that applications are now open for the 2026 UCL Widening Participation in Archives and Records Management Summer School, taking place 6 - 9 July in central London.

Ever wondered who gets to shape the historical record? Curious about questions of power, truth, and accountability? Want to know what a career in archives, records management, or information governance involves?

This summer school aims to open doors to studying and working in the recordkeeping sector, with a focus on widening access to professionally accredited ARM postgraduate courses.

Now is the moment to celebrate the work that is securing our digital future, as nominations for the Digital Preservation Awards 2026 draw to a close.

With nominations open until 09:00 UTC on Tuesday 5 May 2026, this is your final opportunity to recognize and share the work - your own or that of others - that is making a difference across our community.

Organized by the Digital Preservation Coalition every two years, the Digital Preservation Awards are the most prominent global celebration of achievement for those people and organizations who have made significant contributions towards a sustainable future for our digital assets.

The Digital Preservation Coalition is inviting responses from DPC members to a new survey exploring current approaches to “scan-to-preserve” digitization, with submissions open until 8 May (Anywhere on Earth).

Digitization has long supported access and use, often creating digital surrogates of physical records. Increasingly, however, organizations are adopting a scan-to-preserve approach, where the digitized version becomes the official record and the original paper record is subsequently destroyed.

The Digital Preservation Coalition invites its members and the wider digital preservation community to contribute to a global survey identifying humanitarian archives and records at risk of loss.

The survey forms part of the Humanitarian Archives Emergency (HAE) project, led by the Humanitarian Conflict and Response Institute in collaboration with ELRHA, and supported by partners including Key Aid Consulting and the Institute of Development Studies.

The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) is pleased to share that recordings from the Digital Preservation Workflow Webinar Series 2026 are now available to all, following an exclusive six-week preview for DPC members.

The series, held in March, brought together a range of real-world workflows developed and implemented by the digital preservation community. Across four episodes, contributors shared practical approaches to different stages of the digital preservation process and a variety of content types, with space for discussion and questions throughout.